Requiem for a Man with Two First Names by Jesse Raub
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Requiem For a Man With Two First Names by Jesse Raub Mark Antony was loyal to Julius Caesar until the end. His dedication to the tyrant led him to band together with a rag-tag group of brilliant military equals to overthrow his former boss’ murderers, but in the end, he was ousted by Caesar's own adopted son Octavian, who had branded him a traitor, forcing him into exile*. Bound by a sense of duty, propelled by immense talent on the battlefield, Mark Antony’s story is one of quiet tragedy. What could this man have achieved if he had set himself to goals of individual greatness instead of serving the needs of him who he had followed? Michael Anthony, similarly, bowed to a tyrant, and was vanquished by that tyrant’s son. His tenure as the bass player for Van Halen was riddled with humorous references to his short stature and drinking habits (“New Haven, prepare yourselves for this pint-sized, whiskey drinking, crazy mother right here”). Anthony often played into that persona, chugging what we were meant to believe was Jack Daniels from a Jack Daniels bottle. Playing a custom Jack Daniels shaped bass. Running and diving on the stage and wearing a cape, acting the clown. And this is all just from one video, too (Van Halen — Michael Anthony DRUNK BASS SOLO:, YouTube, uploaded January 11, 2008). But to truly appreciate a person’s talent as a musician, to respect the genius of that person’s musicianship, it becomes necessary to delve beyond the theatrics. To push beyond the drama. One could spend the whole warm season indoors poring over how it went wrong for Michael Anthony — how he went from being Eddie Van Halen’s Ginger Rogers doing every run up the fretboard backwards and in white Reebok high tops, well, being a member of the Cabo Wabo Band, the Waboritas, and also in Chickenfoot. But celebrating the downfall of a musician this talented is akin to focusing only on the fact that Mark Antony died by committing suicide in exile with his mistress out of desperation and disgrace, forgetting for a moment that he had once re-united the Roman Empire, cast out Julius Caesar's murderers, and sat at the head of it all while his mistress was the ruler of Egypt. Van Halen introduced themselves to the world in 1978 with Michael Anthony’s bass sloughing through a low-hanging distorted quarter note on track one of side one of the band’s self-titled debut: “Runnin’ With The Devil.” Aside from the occasional fret slide (a sort of engine rev to offset the solid beat of his slow motor chug), Anthony doesn’t stray from this rhythmic slog through the whole track — until, that is, Eddie hits his guitar solos, in which we see something unique to rock and roll music in this timeframe. In 1977 we had punk rock take the cake. Anarchy came from the UK, all right, but four New York brats made a conscious effort to strip the elements of blues from rock ‘n roll and play their own version. Building on simpler rock songs, like a dumbed down version of Black Sabbath’s 1972 “Paranoid,” you began to hear the rhythm section no longer, well, playing rhythm. You also stopped hearing the bass harmonize with the lead guitar parts, and instead just reinforcing the root of the power chord. The three-chord punk revolution gave way to the hair metal domination. But somewhere trapped inside that whole mess were four valley wizards with a fondness for R&B rhythm sections, sock-hop backing vocals, power metal guitar solos, and hard-boogie. Van Halen recorded Van Halen as live as they could in the studio, with almost zero overdubs, and as many musicians playing to track at the same time. Where most bands would have a rhythm guitar track do the heavy-lifting, Michael Anthony comes through at *details surrounding these events may have been left out for literary dramatic purposes intervals through the solo to harmonize with the lead leaving the rhythm work to Eddie’s throwaway backing rhythm overdub. There’s no special origin story for Van Halen. No elite professional musicianship. It was four guys in various garage bands playing it out for nearly four years full time before they landed a record deal. It’s a punk rock garage story before punk rock. It’s a superstar stadium rock band without the professional coaching of a trained, young musician growing into a band. And because of this, Van Halen lived a dream of exactly that — big solos, large stage sets, over the top productions, and no one could tell them the right or wrong way to do it. At the same time, their heroes were all still traditionalists — players. Guys who knew their scales and their keys. And so as the band grew into that role for their first album and their first big tours, they, too, became players. And in some moments, like listening to Michael Anthony harmonize his bass with Eddie’s soloing, it’s easy to think that maybe Van Halen was the last true band of players out there. We don’t see much virtuosic bass playing on any of the albums. That can’t be much of a surprise. With his last name plastered on every album cover, poster, tour t-shirt and promotional see-thru plastic sun-visor, Eddie Van Halen ruled over the band’s process. Every album features an Eddie solo as a standalone track, most songs feature an Eddie solo as the hinge that folds the song into itself. It’s clear he’s writing the riffs. It’s clear he’s building the tracks. And if there’s ever an argument in the band, his brother’s the one with a double barrel kick drum pointed at your head. Simpler bass rhythms serve the songs, and it’s how Eddie wanted it played, and Michael Anthony understood what it meant for the band. Recording mostly live in the studio meant that the songs were able to be nearly fully replicated live on stage as a four piece perfectly to the studio version, and most of the studio versions have a lot of open space. As Eddie said in reference to trying to figure something out for “Dancing In The Street,” “I couldn't figure out a riff, and you know the way I like to play: I always like to do a riff, as opposed to just hitting barre chords and strumming.” When Eddie does build a riff, it floats, flits, and switchback chugs on palm muted syncopation leaving the work of the bass to thunder along with the kick’s patterned Brill Building pop beats. Or when we hit hard-shuffllin’ hyper-boogies like “I’m The One” and “Hot For Teacher” or “Loss of Control,” Michael Anthony holds a swung solid eight-note rattle at 140BPM with a few walking toss outs to keep himself entertained, but you’d be stressed to pick them out with his bass turned so low in the mix. It really is no surprise that a player like Anthony finds no where to turn. How, what, and when you play is dictated by the guitarist. His brother is the drummer. And your best advocate — the man who keeps you employed after it all goes down — is the clown who put a cape on you and called you “pint-sized.” Your light is hidden, your soul is trapped, and your outlets are scarce. Revisiting the YouTube video titled “Van Halen — Michael Anthony DRUNK BASS SOLO” is something to behold. The isolated audio from the track is clearly some type of modern avant noise artist using modulated synthesizers and a computer board to bend tones and arpeggiate notes. But there, on the screen, is our pint-sized hero in the cape he was adorned with by the Red Rocker himself, wearing Sammy’s castoff green sun visor. And his Jack Daniels bass. Creating mountainous soundscapes and leading into fast-tapping picked out chords, he mugs for the crowd before falling to his back and dropping the floor out into a distorted sub bass drone. His live performances become a literal release of everything built up. In the early 1980s, everyone’s favorite punchline rock band member becomes an instrumental keystone in the avant noise movement, but only as a side project to when he’s not being told to hold down a solid backbeat. It’s these edges that show through when the moment strikes. One bass solo per live show. A flourish here or there. These are marks of a caged animal pawing at the gate. Or, better yet, these are the glimpses of brilliance peeking through behind an iron curtain. Like a brilliant young artist trapped in totalitarian society, forced to produce new works that only praise the status quo. It’s no surprise that without an advocate in the group and with fifteen year old Wolfgang Van Halen finally able to legally join the band full time as a working member, forcing Michael Anthony out for good, that Anthony and Sammy Hagar eventually found kinship. What’s also not surprising is that Hagar has relied on Michael Anthony to anchor each of his new musical projects, every time, and with such an amicable working relationship, the need for Michael Anthony to spring off on a crazy solos and pull huge runs and flourishes has faded into a simpler life, a retirement almost. A chance for him to take the lead has faded into smart, melodic toe-to-toe trade-offs with Joe Satriani building chords and key harmonics that play too effortlessly and end up sounding simplistic.